South Africa 306

By Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg

Since a solution to South Africa's grinding racial conflict seems to be beyond grasp, how about 306 solutions? That is exactly the suggestion made in a best-selling book that has raised a new controversy -- and won some surprising backers -- throughout the country. The book, South Africa: The Solution, proposes a Swiss-style confederation that would include a weak central government and 306 local bodies that could choose their own economic and social systems. Black radicals could set up Marxist cantons if they wished, and Afrikaner right-wingers could have their all-white enclaves. Everyone else could choose various systems somewhere between the extremes.

Sales of the book, in English and Afrikaans, have topped 25,000 and kept it on the nonfiction best-seller list for a year, a huge success in a country where nonfiction books usually sell no more than 5,000 copies. Husband-and- Wife Authors Leon Louw and Frances Kendall say they decided to write the book because those who oppose the apartheid system "know what they are against but need something to be for." Says Louw: "The struggle in this country is over who should dominate whom -- that is, who controls the very powerful central government. Our solution entails not having such a central government. We want to make it possible to let the tiger -- the black majority -- out of the cage without whites being eaten."

Louw, a lawyer who heads South Africa's Free Market Foundation, and Kendall, editor of a conservative newsletter, offer a libertarian plan that favors the least possible government and the freest possible enterprise. They point out, however, that their own preferences need not be accepted, since the cantonal system would allow residents of each local unit to select by vote the system they prefer. "All the existing political parties and movements would be likely to come to power somewhere," Louw says. "Then we'll be able to see what works."

At the top level of government, the authors propose a two-house parliament based on proportional representation of the political parties in the cantons. The central government's power would be limited strictly to essential national interests, such as the conduct of defense, national finance and foreign relations. Both houses, Louw and Kendall assume, would have a black majority. So too would almost all the cantons.

The cantons, the book suggests, should be the 306 magisterial districts that already exist in South Africa. Each canton would have its own parliament and possibly its own constitution. Every level of government would be barred from passing laws that discriminate on racial grounds and would be required to apply all laws equally to all races. "In other words," write the authors, "government would be color-blind."

In a more controversial passage, The Solution suggests that "all citizens would have the right to integrate or segregate voluntarily at their own expense." While no laws imposing segregation would be constitutional, neither would any that forced integration. Thus private firms would be free to discriminate. For economic reasons, however, the authors believe very few firms would refuse to deal with or serve blacks.

Anticipating worries that the plan would result in a few rich white cantons and many poor black ones, the book observes that there would be free movement of people, goods and capital among the cantons. "What people probably think is that the whites would take over Johannesburg and the gold mines around it," says Kendall. "No, that could not happen. There are so many black workers here that Johannesburg would have a black majority." Louw adds, "It would be an unambiguous handover of the rich areas to blacks. The only places there could be allwhite cantons would be in sparsely populated rural areas."

The book's proposals have received wide support among South African blacks. Winnie Mandela, wife of the imprisoned black nationalist leader, in a foreword to the Swedish edition of the book, says it offers a "broad alternative we have all been looking for." Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, chief minister of KwaZulu, rarely agrees with Mandela, but he also likes the idea. Says he: "Amid a sea of anger and tension, The Solution may prove to be a rational, workable answer to South Africa's unique problems."

Most South African whites are less enthusiastic but are nonetheless intrigued by the proposal. Eli Louw (no kin), the Minister of Transport, has called the book "worthwhile reading for those dealing with the future of our country." Hendrik Verwoerd, son of the late Prime Minister who institutionalized the apartheid system and himself a leading right-winger, said that while he did not accept the canton system as proposed, the book "provides an important contribution in breaking away from the dangerous unitary state philosophy into a direction which will open eyes to other possibilities."

The Solution has become something of a cause celebre. With funding from several major companies, including the giant Anglo American Corp., the authors have set up Groundswell, a political-action movement. Groundswell hopes to raise $15 million for a two-year program of lectures, seminars, television and newspaper advertising. The book will be translated into eight African languages, and a U.S. edition will be published in May. Louw and Kendall candidly admit they do not expect the white-dominated government to embrace their proposals. Instead they put their faith in creating a grass-roots demand for change. "If we can get the crowd moving in the right direction," Louw says, "the politicians will have no choice but to get out in front of it." Even if it does not turn out precisely that way, the authors' solution and their readers' eager response to it demonstrate that not all South Africans are waiting numbly for chaos to sweep away the past and dictate the future.